Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/144

Rh 132 nature entirely and to take on both the taste and the colour of the wine, or as iron heated red-hot loses its own appearance and glows like fire, or as air filled with sun light is transformed into the same brightness so that it does not so much appear to be illuminated as to be itself light, so must all human feeling towards the Holy One be self-dissolved in unspeakable wise, and wholly transfused into the will of God. For how shall God be all in all if anything of man remains in man ? The substance will indeed remain, but in another form, another glory, another power &quot; (De diligendo Deo, c. 10). These are the favourite similes of mysticism, wherever it is found. The Vic- Mysticism was more systematically developed by Ber- torines. nard s contemporary Hugo of St Victor (1096-1 141). The Augustinian monastery of St Victor near Paris became the headquarters of mysticism during the 12th century. It had a wide influence in awakening popular piety, and the works that issued from it formed the text-books of mystical and pietistic minds in the centuries that followed. Hugo s pupil, Richard of St Victor, declares, in opposition to dialectic scholasticism, that the objects of mystic con templation are partly above reason, and partly, as in the intuition of the Trinity, contrary to reason. He enters at length into the conditions of ecstasy and the yearnings that precede it. Walter, the third of the Victorines, carried on the polemic against the dialecticians. Bona- ventura (1221-74) was a diligent student of the Victor ines, and in his Itinerarium, mentis ad Deum maps out the human faculties in a similar fashion. He introduces the terms &quot;apex mentis&quot; and &quot;scintilla&quot; (also &quot;syn- deresis &quot; or o-wr^pTycris) to describe the faculty of mystic intuition. Bonaventura runs riot in phrases to describe the union with God, and his devotional works were much drawn upon by mystical preachers. Fully a century later, when the system of scholasticism was gradually breaking up under the predominance of Occam s nominalism, Pierre d Ailly (1350-1425), and his more famous scholar John Gerson (1363-1429), chancellor of the university of Paris, are found endeavouring to combine the doctrines of the Victorines and Bonaventura with a nominalistic philo sophy. They are the last representatives of mysticism within the limitations imposed by scholasticism. Early From the 12th and 13th centuries onward there is ob- German servable in the different countries of Europe a widespread mystics. re a c t,ion a g a i ns t the growing formalism and worldliness of the church and the scandalous lives of many of the clergy. Men began to feel a desire for a theology of the heart and an unworldly simplicity of life. Thus there arose in the Netherlands the Beguines and Beghards, in Italy the Waldenses (without, however, any mystical leaning), in the south of France and elsewhere the numerous sect or sects of the Cathari, and in Calabria the apocalyptic gospel of Joachim of Floris, all bearing witness to the commotion of the time. The lay societies of the Beghards and Beguines (for men and women respectively) date from the end of the 1 2th century, and soon became extremely popular both in the Low Countries and on the Rhine. They were free at the outset from any heretical taint, but were never much in favour with the church. In the beginning of the 13th century the foundation of the Dominican and Franciscan orders furnished a more ecclesiastical and regu lar means of supplying the same wants, and numerous convents sprang up at once throughout Germany. The German mind was a peculiarly fruitful soil for mysticism, and, in connexion either with the Beguines or the church organization, a number of women appear about this time, combining a spirit of mystical piety and asceticism with sturdy reformatory zeal directed against the abuses of the time. Even before this we hear of the prophetic visions of Hildegard of Bingen (a contemporary of St Bernard) and Elizabeth of Schonau. In the 13th century Elizabeth of Hungary, the pious landgravine of Thuringia, assisted in the foundation of many convents in the north of Germany. For an account of the chief of these female saints the reader is referred to the first volume of Preger s Geschichte der deutschen Mystilc. Mechthild of Magdeburg appears to have been the most influential, and her book Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit is important as the oldest work of its kind in German. It proves that much of the terminology of German mysticism was current before Eckhart s time. Mechthild s clerico- political utterances show that she was acquainted with the &quot; eternal gospel &quot; of Joachim of Floris. Joachim had proclaimed the doctrine of three world-ages the kingdom of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit. The reign of the Spirit was to begin with the year 1260, when the abuses of the world and the church were to be effectually cured by the general adoption of the monastic life of contemplation. Very similar to this in appearance is the teaching of Amalrich of Bena (ob. 1207); but, while the movements just men tioned were reformatory without being heretical, this is very far from being the case with the mystical pantheism derived by Amalrich from the writings of Erigena. His followers held a progressive revelation of God in the ages of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just as the Mosaic dispensation came to an end with the appearance of Christ, so the sacraments of the new dispensation have lost their meaning and efficacy since the incarnation of God as Holy Spirit in the Amalricans. With this opposition to the church they combine a complete antinomianism, through the identification of all their desires with the impulses of the divine Spirit. Amalrich s teaching was condemned by the church, and his heresies led to the public burning of Erigena s De divisione naturae, in 1225. The sect of the New Spirit, or of the Free Spirit as it was afterwards called, spread widely through the north of France and into Switzerland and Germany. They were especially numerous in the Rhineland in the end of the 13th and during the 14th century; and they seem to have corrupted the originally orthodox communities of Beghards, for Beghards and Brethren of the Free Spirit are used henceforward as convertible terms, and the same immoralities are related of both. Such was the seed-ground in which what is speci fically known as German mysticism sprang up. In Meister Eckhart (1260-1329; see ECKHAET) theEckhart. German mind definitively asserts its pre-eminence in the sphere of speculative mysticism. Eckhart was a dis tinguished son of the church ; but in reading his works we feel at once that we have passed into quite a different sphere of thought from that of the churchly mystics ; we seem to leave the cloister behind and to breathe a freer atmosphere. The scholastic mysticism was, for the most part, practical and psychological in character. It was largely a devotional aid to the realization of present union with God ; and, so far as it was theoretical, it was a theory of the faculties by which such a union is attainable. Mysticism was pieced on somewhat incongruously to a scholastically accepted theology ; the feelings and the intellect were not brought together. But in Eckhart the attitude of the churchman and traditionalist is entirely abandoned. Instead of systematizing dogmas, he appears to evolve a philosophy by the free exercise of reason. His system enables him to give a profound significance to the doctrines of the church ; but, instead of the system being accommodated to the doctrines, the doctrines and especi ally the historical facts acquire a new sense in the system, and often become only a mythical representation of specu lative truth. The freedom with which Eckhart treats historical Christianity allies him much more to the German idealists of the 19th century than to his scholastic prede-